Topic: a sad, sad day

[Jake]

After many years of owning motorola phones, I finally switched. I dropped my Z2 Force the other day and the camera lens broke :/ Before the Z2 I owned probably 8-10 other motorola models - essentially after the blackberry pearl all i've had was motorola and I would get the latest model every year to 18 months. After this one broke, I was ready to get the new Z3 - but reviews were pretty horrible so I started looking into it. The main reason that I picked motorola over anything else was the battery life - the Z2 was outfitted with a smaller battery than before, but I still got 24-30 hours of use time. The Z3 battery got even smaller! on top of it, no more shatter proof glass - WTF?

I started looking at other phones. I even considered the new iPhone - but the battery life doesn't even come close. How do you iPhone people do it? the XS has only 12 hours of usage time!! I could not do it.

My wife had a samsung before, and I hated it.

So I really didn't know what to do. A friend sudgested LG - I did some research and both V30 and G7 had some wonderful reviews. So I took the plunge and got the G7 ThinQ. Setup was pretty painless. I hope I will like it as much as I did motorola - I like to stay loyal to brands that serve me well. the G7 is said to have up to 37 hours of usage time!

If anyone will be interested, I will update this review in a few weeks.

[Perspective]

I have an LG G6 and i love it. The wide angle lens makes for some really great cell phone photography.

I installed the google now launcher to replace the LG one, the LG one is too iPhone IMHO. There's many options on the play store worth checking out.

Also, battery life was easily two days of normal use when the phone was new. Now I get to the end of one day with around 15 - 20% which is ok (not quite two years old). My wife has an iPhone 7 and hates it, battery never lasts a full day of use.

[micah]

I have the LG-V30 that I got last fall (I had had G4 and was going to get the G6 when it came out but then held out and went with the v-30)

I really like it... except the camera lens broke. I bought a repair kit on amazon and fixed it and it was fine and then cracked again.  So I'm pretty frustrated with it right now since all my pictures are blurry; but other than that its a spiffy phone, great battery and snappy performance.

Looking forward to your review on the G7

[ober]

I have the iPhoneX and my battery typically lasts all day and that's with GPS usage, some gaming and reasonable usage otherwise.  I normally only charge at night.  And my wife has an iPhone 8S and the battery life is even better on it. 

I suppose it comes down to how you use it and what your goals are. 

[micah]

thinking more about battery life, I *say* my V30 is great, but honestly, I plug it in when I'm in my car to and from work and everynight when I go to bed so - even with heavy use - it rarely gets low.

[Perspective]

Depends a lot on the age of the device too. iPhone X and 8S are both pretty new phones. My wife's 7 is two years old.

[ober]

Yeah, before the X I had a 6 and it maybe lasted a half day but that phone was starting to crap out in other ways too.  It wasn't bad for being almost 4 years old though?

[tgm]

OnePlus gets good reviews from fellow tech folks. I'm going to needs a new phone soon and it's on my list of contenders. I've tried my best to stick with Google phones but the prices are getting a bit silly.

[JaWiB]

I have a Galaxy S8 Active. Best phone ever

I have the S7 version. Not too shabby either

[RobR]

My wife had a samsung before, and I hated it.

Genuine question: What did you hate about it? I can get disliking it, but hate is such a strong term...

Oh, and S8 here. 70% battery left at the end of most days.

[ober]

Question for you android folks... not that I plan to switch necessarily, but part of what I like about the apple ecosystem is the parental controls.  Our kids have to ask for approval for new apps and we can control when they can use the devices.  Does Android have similar controls?

Also, the general sharing and global editing of things like notes is really good between apple devices.  I assume Google has something similar?

[Perspective]

Question for you android folks... not that I plan to switch necessarily, but part of what I like about the apple ecosystem is the parental controls.  Our kids have to ask for approval for new apps and we can control when they can use the devices.  Does Android have similar controls?

Also, the general sharing and global editing of things like notes is really good between apple devices.  I assume Google has something similar?

All samsung devices have a kids mode (you install it from the samsung app store). It's EXCELLENT, at least for young kids... You can control which apps and media they have access to. It's awesome because they don't have access to the play store, which means whenever they accidentally click an ad in a game they just get a little pop-up that says the app store is unable to launch and then they're back in the game.

Kids mode is great for my 5 year old, but it may be a little too kiddy for older kids though.


For the second question, yes, google keep/calendar/photos is excellent for synching and sharing across devices.

[Perspective]

This thing I really hate about iOS is that you can't configure which apps are the default handlers of different types of content like you can for Android. If you tell Siri to play a song, it opens iTunes. Google can be configured to use any music app. If you click on a URL in iOS, it opens Safari.. on Android, choose any browser. Want to open a photo? Apple Photos... on android, choose your favorite photo library or editing app. Click on an address or GPS coordinate? That has to be Apple Maps on iOS.. but again on Android you can choose. calendar entry/iCal? opens in Apple Calendar, on android, your choice!  It's a real pain if you're already set up with Google services and try to use an iPhone.

I also like Androids sorted "app drawer" that allows me to have fewer icons on my desktops. I know iOS lets you have folders but it's not quite the same.

[Jake]

My wife had a samsung before, and I hated it.

Genuine question: What did you hate about it? I can get disliking it, but hate is such a strong term...

Oh, and S8 here. 70% battery left at the end of most days.

Hello Rob! how are you?

I hate devices that should be simple but [at least to me] are not intuitive at all. Even though it is an android device I had a halluva time navigating around it. second part was battery life, it was pretty horrible. I don't remember which model she had, but it was about two years ago. Pure hate, I tell you!

[Jake]

I've had the G7 for a week and a half, here is my review:

Pros:
-screen is super nice; brilliant colors, crisp display
-size is ideal - it is just a hair thinner than my moto but just enough that with one hand my thumb reaches everywhere
-great audio - both on speaker and head phones - at least compared to my moto which was pretty quiet, especially on the speaker. This one is so loud that I don't even have to have it on the max level.
- head phone jack!
- unlike what I mention in the previous post, this GUI is very intuitive and I had no issues navigating it from the start

Cons
- battery life is just OK - I understand I was spoiled with the moto, but I was hoping this would be similar. I barely get 24 hours of usage and find myself plugging it in each night. I hope that there are still things I will learn to disable on this phone to extend the battery life just like I did on the moto
- battery charging speed - even with the turbo charger it still takes a little over 2 hours to get a full charge from less than 5%. Moto was much faster - full charge in about 45 minutes
- google assist physical button - there is a button located below the volume buttons that brings up the google assistant, I never use this feature, and find myslef hitting the button by accident often. I wonder if I could reprogram it to something else


still testing:
- finger print reader is on the rear of the phone - I'm still not sure if that is a good spot or not
- camera: there are features that I love, like the portrait settings and the wide lens is super cool but jury is still out on the quality of the pictures themselves.

wish I had:
- moto motions - I think that is what it was called. Where I could turn on the flashlight by shaking the phone twice. Or silence an incoming call by waving over the phone. Those features were awesome
- moto display: when phone was in the "sleep" mode - that was one of the slickest things moto had - you could chose which notification came to you and displayed on the dark screen. This made it very convenient to look into emails or texts when in meetings and such https://youtu.be/3TMycL9mzpg